Author(s): Ufuk ALPKAYA, Hakkı ÃOKNAZ
The aim of this study is to compare the attitudes of high school students, as regards to their gender, towards physical education courses and their obese peers and to determine the relationship between these two. The research was conducted at four public schools in ?stanbul province of Turkey, during the Fall semester of the 2016/2017 Academic year. 548 high school first year students volunteered to participate in the study, 224 of whom were females and 324 males with the age average of 16,38±2.98. Attitude Scale Towards Obese Children, developed by Çelik et al. (2015), was used to determine the attitudes of the students towards their obese peers. In order to establish the attitudes of the students towards the physical education courses, Attitude Scale Towards Physical education Courses developed by Güllü and Güçlü (2009) was used. For the statistical analyses of gender difference independent t test was used, whereas Pearson correlation was used for Correlation, and the significance level was set at p<0,05. As for the attitudes towards the physical education courses, our study has found the score 114,3 for the whole group, and the scores were 106,17 and 119, 97 for the females and the males, respectively. With reference to the gender difference in comparing the attitudes of the students towards the physical education courses, a statistically significant difference was found in favor of the males (p<0.05). The scores for the attitudes of the students towards their obese peers were found 46,81 for the whole group, and 46,90 for the females and 46,75 for the males. No statistical difference was found in comparing the student attitudes based on gender difference towards their obese peers. No meaningful relationship was found between the attitudes towards the obese peers and the physical education courses (p>0.05). It is known that insufficient physical activity has influence of the emergence of obesity. However, it can be said that the positive or negative attitudes of the students towards the obese individual do not determine their attitudes towards the physical education courses and that they can be related to other factors.
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